1973 Chevy C10 Buildup - The Pickup Fix-Up Tour

Let's face it, drum brakes do a good job of stopping, but do a horrible job of dissipating heat and we plan on using this truck in extreme heat situations. We were not sad to see these hunks of junk go to the scrap yard.

This install required the rear axles to be removed, which meant the differential had to be drained.

With the drum brakes removed, the axle C-clips in the differential were pulled free and the axles slid out.

Next, Baer's aluminum adapter was bolted to the rear housing flange using the provided hardware.

The center hubs of our axles were about .020 too large to fit inside of the new brake rotor mounting hats, so they were chucked up in the lathe and turned down.

Once the material was taken off, the axles were reinstalled into the rearend housing and the rotors were slid in place.

Then, the factory brake line tabs on the rear axle tubes were cut off so the brake line could be slightly moved. The lines were reattached to the axle tubes using hose clamps and then the new calipers were installed onto the conversion brackets.

And finally, the new braided brake lines were attached to the factory hard lines at the axle tubes.

The last upgrade part in the kit was this billet aluminum proportioning valve. It was installed onto the rear brake line coming out of the master cylinder so that we can adjust the brake bias toward the front of the truck, enabling the front brakes to do the majority of the stopping, which will prevent the rear brakes from locking up when there's no load in the bed.

The last work to be performed was bleeding the brake system to remove any air bubbles that were in the lines. This is a must-do if you want the pedal to feel firm and the brakes to work properly. Here, we see Dutch opening the bleeder valve while Mike pumps the brake pedal. This step was repeated at each corner of the truck until all air was out of the system.

What does a 12-inch rotor look like when it's stuffed inside of a 17-inch wheel? Killer! At this point in the trip we didn't know how much better the truck stopped compared to the old brakes. Our seat-of-the-pants assessment says the Baer system works much better and we are happy to report that we can mash the pedal during panic stops without the truck pulling to one side or the other, a trait that the old brake and suspension systems definitely exhibited. The truck corners hard, stops quickly, and hauls the mail, but it's still ugly. Our plan will send us to Texas to take care of the ugly part.

Once we got the truck back on the ground and we tried to install the front wheel center caps, we realized there was a small problem. We forgot to ask Vintage Wheelworks to make sure the oversize Baer brake hubs would clear the center bore of the new wheels when we sent the company Baer's template for proper brake caliper fitment. We'll have to turn the brake hubs down in a lathe when we get home to fix the problem. Calin spent a few hours trying to sand down one of the center caps to fit back on the wheel and it did, but we weren't sure if it would stay on during the rest of the trip so we left it off.

Before we hit the road and left the guys at Baer behind us, we had to get the truck's alignment checked because we were worried the new drop spindles might have changed the toe-in specs. Todd took us to a local shop that verified that the toe-in had changed less than 1 degree, reset it to stock specs, and then we were good to go again.